Crested Coralroot orchids at Stone Mountain State Park, North Carolina — 2020-07-26

This will be a short trip report. This morning, Walter Ezell and I left the house shortly before 7:00 am on a 3-hour trip to Stone Mountain State Park in Alleghany County, North Carolina. Stone Mountain is a dome of exposed granite of Devonian age, which has intruded into the gneiss of the Precambrian Alligator Back Formation. It rises sharply over 600 feet (~200 meters) above the surrounding terrain.

The target species was Hexalectris spicata or Crested Coralroot orchid. For those of you who are familiar with this orchid species, you already know that it is one of North America’s more flamboyant native orchids. It is found in about 20 states, and its range is from Florida north to Maryland, west to Missouri, and south to New Mexico and Texas. It is rather randomly scattered in each of these states in rather dry, oak/hickory woods. Generally, it prefers a basic (higher pH) soil, but where we find them on Stone Mountain is a puzzle, for me anyway. They grow on the very top of the mountain in an unusual glade-like setting. Here is a sample of what we found:

Crested Coralroot orchid

Here is another specimen that was in bloom:

We made it to the park with little or no traffic on the highway. I parked the truck, and we gathered our gear. I packed the camera bag carefully, because the hike from the parking area to the top of the mountain is about 2 miles (3.2 km). That really does not sound bad, I know, but the last half-mile (.8 km) is straight up the mountain although it is made of a number of switch-backs. The temperature was reasonable for late July, but I did break a sweat even before reaching the switch-backs. Never-the-less, we finally made it to the top of the mountain. Along the way, we stopped to take a landscape shot:

It’s a gneiss view, but most people take it for granite… 😉 I had to say that — it was Walter’s joke…

Anyway, the first Crested Coralroot orchid plant I found was in pretty tight bud, so I set about to find some that were in bloom. This was quite the challenge, because although we ended up finding about a dozen plants, all but three of them had closed flowers. I’ve seen this before at this location, and I’m not sure what causes the flowers to not fully open, so it was a bit of disappointment.

Here is an example of how the large majority of the plants looked:

It may be some sort of blight, and I did see a number of tiny black beetles on a couple of the plants.

I managed to make “lemonade” out of the “lemons” by taking a few close-up shots of one of the plants that had two open flowers:

In past years, I’ve seen both Tipularia discolor or Crane-fly orchid as well as Spiranthes lacera var. gracilis or Southern Slender Ladies’-tresses orchid along the trail, but this year, they were conspicuously absent. Just so you know what I am talking about, here are images I took a few years ago:

Well, it was not a complete bust, but I was still disappointed with the showing. Again, it’s rather odd that these Crested Coralroot orchids are found here at all. I should not let it pass that it was my friend, Stan Bentley, author of Native Orchids of the Southern Appalachian Mountains (2000, University of North Carolina Press) who first told me about this site. The book is out of print, but it is available on Amazon for a very high price.

I’ve tried to visit the Stone Mountain State Park site every year, but I’m not too sure how long the plants will continue to thrive on top of the mountain. Many orchid populations have a fickle reliability, and they are known to seemingly disappear for years before they magically reappear. Apparently, they live underground where their fungal symbiote keeps them alive.

Until next time…

–Jim